Events and Event Definitions (BPMN)

An event is something that happens during the course of a process. Events include the start and end of an activity, and any other intermediate happening (such as a change of state or receipt of a message) which will affect its sequence or timing. You can create events in collaboration, process, and choreography diagrams.

The following types of events are available:

None - Untyped events, which indicate start points, state changes, and final states.
Message - Receiving and sending messages.
Timer - Cyclic timer events, points in time, time spans, or timeouts.
Escalation - Escalating to a higher level of responsibility.
Conditional - Reacting to changed business conditions or integrating business rules.
Link - Off-page connectors. Two corresponding link events equal a sequence flow.
Error - Catching or throwing named errors.
Cancel - Reacting to cancelled transactions or triggering cancellation.
Compensation - Handling or triggering compensation.
Signal - Signalling across different processes. A signal thrown can be caught multiple times.
Multiple - Catching one out of a set of events. Throwing all events defined.
Parallel multiple - Catching all out of a set of parallel events.
Terminate - Triggering the immediate termination of a process.

Creating Events

Each type of event can be created in one or more different contexts:

Start events:
- Top-level - Create the event with its Toolbox tool.
- Event sub-process interrupting - Create the event with its Toolbox tool within an event sub-process.
Intermediate events:
- Catching - Create the event with its Toolbox tool.
- Boundary interrupting - Right-click a sequence flow and select Add Boundary Event > Type.
- Throwing - Create a catching event, right-click the symbol, and select Change to Throwing Event.
  
  Alternately, open the event property sheet, click the Implementation tab, and select Generate event in the Type field.
End events - Create the event with its Toolbox tool.

Event Types

The following table shows the symbols of all the types of events available in each context:

Type	Start		Intermediate			End
Type	Top-Level	Event Sub-Process Interrupting	Catching	Boundary Interrupting	Throwing	End
None
Message
Timer
Escalation
Conditional
Link
Error
Cancel
Compensation
Signal
Multiple
Parallel Multiple
Terminate

Events are based upon and share the properties of starts (see Starts and Ends (BPM )), processes, (see Processes (BPM)), events (see Events (BPM)), or ends (see Starts and Ends (BPM )), as appropriate.

Note: You can change the type of an event by right-clicking its symbol or Browser entry and selecting the appropriate Change to... command.

Event Definitions

For multiple and parallel multiple events, click the Event Definitions tab and use the Add Objects and Create an Object tools to reuse or create new event definitions to associate with the event.